Nobel panel: Give war a chance

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Barack Obama its 2009 peace prize, its members probably didn’t anticipate that the American president would send the U.S. military to fight in Libya just over a year later. And that has some Obama critics demanding that he return it.

“The Nobel Peace Prize is no declaration of sainthood,” Geir Lundestad, the committee’s secretary, told POLITICO in an interview from Norway. “And no American president will ever be a saint.”

The question, Lundestad said, “is whether you are trying to move the world in a better direction, and what the committee liked about Obama was his insistence on trying multilateral diplomacy, dialogue and negotiation.”

The members of the influential Nobel panel, who are essentially sworn to secrecy, “have no regrets,” Lundestad added.

Still, a host of other actions — and inactions — have emerged during Obama’s presidency that seem to contradict the concept of peace. He escalated the war in Afghanistan, has reneged on a promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and has authorized attacks against a radical American Muslim cleric overseas.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the Nobel Committee’s chairman, told POLITICO simply: “He got the prize for what he did. Not what he did afterwards.”

When the committee selected Obama just months into his first year in office, it cited his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The committee’s leaders now say the prize also supports “processes initiated” by Obama, and that they hoped the accolade would “stimulate further action as well.”

“I cannot think about many other people that have done more for peace in the world than President Obama did in one year,” said Jagland, who is secretary general of the Council of Europe. “He did so many things to change the political climate in the world — moving away from confrontation to dialogue and negotiations.”

The president has worked for ratification of a treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons, made good on a promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq, and raised human rights as an issue when Hu Jintao, China’s president, visited the White House. The president also has hailed pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, consistently declaring his support for the “aspirations” of the oppressed who are fighting for freedom.